If you’re a huge fan of Apple products, like my wife, the good news is that the company doesn’t share the legal and political liabilities of its tech brethren. It doesn’t dominate the market with regard to any particular product, so antitrust is not a problem, and it doesn’t shape the political debate to a dangerous degree. Nobody really hates Apple–at least not like Facebook or Amazon. It’s just a well-run company with plenty of cachet and a mountain of cash.
But Apple has two different, and very serious, points of vulnerability. First, it has exposure to China that the other tech companies don’t. Losing the Chinese market would be painful; being forced to make major changes to the supply chain would be far worse than that. Second, Apple appears to have lost its mojo as a product developer. The company is basically living off its past glories at this point.
BUY OR SELL? Sell. Apple is a mature, profitable company that hasn’t shown the ability to revolutionize anything for the last several years. It’s all downhill, albeit slowly, from here.